Typically, at some point prior to a passenger's departure on a flight, a security check is performed to verify that a passenger's name on a boarding pass matches the name on their passport or identity document.
A boarding pass is usually a paper document with the passenger's name, flight details, gate and seat number printed on it. Usually, the check is a visual check performed by a security officer who checks that the passenger name on the boarding pass matches the passenger name on the passenger's passport.
Currently in airports, it takes, on average, anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to complete an aircraft boarding for an international flight, depending on the size of the aircraft and the number of passengers.
In order to board an aircraft, an agent stands in front of the boarding gate and lets each passenger board the aircraft, one at a time, after verifying his boarding pass and a form of identification.
The verification process that usually takes place is for the agent to look at the person's face, look at the passport, then look at the boarding pass and to place the boarding pass onto a reader for scanning, so that the Departure Control System can be updated. This process can take about 5 to 25 seconds per passenger to perform.
As part of the scanning process, data is read from a MRZ on a page of the passport by opening the passport and placing it on an optical reader, which performs Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on the MRZ. Optical Character Recognition is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of printed text into machine-encoded text.
In addition to the amount of time taken to process each passenger, the required infrastructure to scan is quite large since a space for a desk, a full personal computer, and a printer and a scanner are required.